Pretext Quotes - Page 2

Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.

Ernest Renan

Jesus, Humanity, Enemy

Ernest Renan (1864). “The Life of Jesus”, p.90

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However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and leads them in practice to respect individuals under the pretext of respecting order itself.

Antonin Artaud

Order, Practice, Ideas

Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.341, Univ of California Press

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But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.

Herbert Butterfield

Self, Civilization, Giving

Herbert Butterfield (1953). “Christianity, Diplomacy and War”, London : Epworth Press

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The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.

Michael Pare

Real, Fighting, Political

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Text without context is pretext.

Walter Martin

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Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them.

Carlo Goldoni

Wish, Deceit, Use

"La Villeggiatura", I, 12, as quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations, p. 182-83, 1922.

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By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed.

Spencer W. Kimball

Mean, Men, Holy Prophet

Spencer W. Kimball (1982). “The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”

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A global financial cabal engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble [2008], illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the US; and used 'privatization' as a form of piracy - a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder Clearly, there was a global financial coup d'etat underway.

Catherine Austin Fitts

Moving, Government, Debt

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At this day . . . the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; . . . but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God.

John Calvin

Mean, Men, Names

John Calvin “The Institutes Of The Christian Religion, Books First and Second”, Jazzybee Verlag

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A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line

George Bernard Shaw

Believe, Sacrifice, Animal

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I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human.

Hugo Grotius

Christian, War, Fighting

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...the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. [...] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

Pope Pius X

Country, Powerful, True Friend

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As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.

Noam Chomsky

War, Government, Self

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Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words.

Peter Abelard

Book, Passion, Kissing

Peter Abelard (2012). “Historia Calamitatum - The Story Of My Misfortunes (Annotated Edition)”, p.16, Jazzybee Verlag

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It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another, there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

Albert J. Nock

Giving, Assumption, Social

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...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

Gottfried Leibniz

Men, Ideas, Imagination

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A pretext-not a cause-is sufficient for us to enter the "solitary situation", the situation of the dreaming solitude. In this solitude, memories arrange themselves in tableaux. Decor takes precedence over drama. Sad memories take on at least the peace of melancholy.

Gaston Bachelard

Dream, Memories, Drama

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Who is against democracy? Is it the one who calls for peaceful resistance, or the one who bombs people, sheds their blood and leads them away from the leaders under feeble and dirty pretexts?

Muqtada al Sadr

Dirty, Naughty, Blood

"Wanted Iraqi cleric 'willing to die'", www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2004.

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Instead of preaching the good news that sinners can be made righteous in Christ and escape the wrath to come, the gospel has degenerated into the pretext that we can be happy in Christ and escape the hassles of life.

Ray Comfort

Wrath, News, Christ

Ray Comfort (2004). “Revival's Golden Key”, Bridge-Logos

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Religious fundamentalism, even before it eliminates human beings by perpetrating horrendous killings, eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext.

Pope Francis

Religious, Killing, Humans

"Pope Francis says fundamentalist terrorism result of 'deviant forms of religion" by Associated Press, www.foxnews.com. January 12, 2015.

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At every step there is a pretext for enmity against our brother.

John of Kronstadt

Brother, Enmity, Steps

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A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.

Isabelle Eberhardt

Offering, Essence, Giving

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Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

Karl Marx

Frustrated, Arms, Revolutionary

Karl Marx (1973). “Political writings”

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As long as my opponent has not yet castled, on each move I seek a pretext for an offensive. Even when I realize that the king is not in danger.

Mikhail Tal

Kings, Moving, Long

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The whole race, which is now called Gallic or Galatic,is madly fond of war,high-spirited and quick to battle,but otherwise straightforward and not of evil character.For at any time or place and on whatever pretext you stir them up,you will have them ready to face danger,even if they have nothing on their side but their own strength and courage.

Strabo

War, Character, Race

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